Monday, June 03, 2013

Guns and Public Policy

Dr. Alan Scott wrote this article, and it seems to me is writing it from a Liberty standpoint. The constitution clearly states that we have the right to bear arms, BUT congress can regulate it at any time. He says that the reason there is a lot of gun violence in the U.S. is basically because we have a hard time finding the balance between our rights, and our freedom to live in a society with gun regulation. No one can ever agree on that balance in congress. He also says that there is a higher percentage of people using guns other than self-defense in their homes because they never got background checks. He then goes on to say that an effective way of regulating guns would be to ban them all together, and from what I understand, to "rebuy" them from the government. He contradicts himself shortly after that by saying that this would lead to overthrowing the government.

This seems like an exaggeration to me. First of all, the constitution covers us from a liberty point of view from the government ever banning guns..."we have the right to bear arms". While they do have the right to regulate gun control, they cannot simply ban our guns completely. Second, coming back to "rebuy" our guns, thus leading to overthrowing of the government is ridiculous.

He states that the U.K. has less than 200 deaths per year from guns. This is because their government regulates their gun control a lot more than the U.S. This is how we should lower our gun violence as well. It is efficient, and not damaging our Liberty rights.